24200 – APN Risk & Compliance Index™

The APN Risk & Compliance Index™ reads the regulatory and financial-system pressure bearing on Australian property: how hard regulators are enforcing, how loosely mortgage credit is being extended, and how much distress is showing in mortgages and household finances. Higher readings mean more pressure.

It is a national time series, the equal-weighted mean of four components, each standardised against its own history.

The APN Credit Rationing Index™ enters inverted: tighter rationing lowers the index, and looser credit raises it, because credit extended loosely is a build-up of risk. The other three enter as they read. The APN System Friction Index™ (24220) has no data source and joins the index when one exists.

Each component is shown at its own latest certified quarter, on one shared scale (−3σ to +3σ), from March 2019. Components are drawn as they read; the APN Credit Rationing Index™ enters the index inverted. The household-insolvency card begins in December 2021, after its recorded break.

At +0.9343σ in the March quarter 2026, the index is at the highest point of its joint record, which runs from December 2021. It read close to −1.0 through 2022, when credit was rationed most tightly and mortgage arrears and household insolvencies were at their lows, and has been positive since the December quarter 2023.

Three of the four components point the same way in March 2026: enforcement (+1.1006σ), looser credit (+1.0027σ as entered) and household insolvency (+1.6844σ). Mortgage distress sits at its average (−0.0505σ).

• Reference quarter. The reading is taken at the latest quarter in which all four components are at full coverage, March 2026, with no blending of different quarters. Three components have since published June 2026; the regulatory component waits on ASIC’s January–June 2026 count.
• Indicative position. The joint window holds 18 quarters, below the 20 at which empirical ranking begins, so the position is model-based: the standard normal distribution evaluated at the reading divided by the index’s variance correction of 0.8761, estimated from the correlations among the four components. Empirical ranking begins automatically at 20 joint quarters, with the change of basis disclosed.
• Household-insolvency break. The household-insolvency component is comparable only from the December quarter 2021, which sets the start of the joint window.
• Short baselines. Three components draw on APRA data that begins in 2019, so their baselines hold fewer quarters than the platform minimum. This is disclosed on each component’s page.
• A missing component. The APN System Friction Index™ (24220) has no data source. The index composes on the four components that have one, and recomposes when it joins.